But when he strides out to complete his 500-yard stretch of the Queen's Baton Relay on Saturday his thoughts will be with the one person who will not be there - his father.

Ashley was born with a brittle-bone condition which has given him the skeleton of an 80-year-old.

He lost his father Ruhy in April after a heart transplant operation at Wythenshawe hospital failed.

The Nether Alderley teenager, a pupil at Stockport Grammar School, said: "My dad knew about my being chosen for the relay and he was really proud. He used to sit by the walking machine while I did 500 yards - he was my personal trainer."

Ruhy had suffered kidney failure and needed daily home dialysis while waiting for a donor heart and kidney.

It would have been his second transplant. He was first given a new heart in Harefield Hospital in 1986 but it began to fail and six years ago he was told he would need both a heart and kidney

Instead of his dad, Ashley will have one of Ruhy's closest friends urging him on in his Macclesfield section of the relay - the clinical director of Wythenshawe transplant services, Abdul Deiraniya, who performed the heart transplant.

"He is the one person my dad would have selected," said Ashley.

Ashley was born with a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta that gives him brittle bones.

He has broken his leg six times, as well as suffering fractures of the wrist, toes and feet, and has lost count of the number of fractures in his spine, caused by a jolt as slight as stumbling on a step.

The sport-mad youngster lived in constant pain until two years ago, when he started a pioneering treatment at St Mary's Hospital.